Argentina’s “Second Evita” Now a Lame Duck

First Hon­duras, now Argentina. Good to see Latin Amer­ica is cor­rect­ing its mis­take ear­lier this decade when it elected all those left-wingers to power.

Argentina’s first cou­ple suf­fered a stun­ning set­back in an elec­tion seen as a ref­er­en­dum on their polit­i­cal dynasty, los­ing con­trol of both houses of Congress.

The loss weak­ened Pres­i­dent Cristina Fernandez’s gov­ern­ment two years before she leaves office by dimin­ish­ing her abil­ity to push leg­is­la­tion through Con­gress and dam­ag­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of her Per­o­nist party as it seeks direc­tion ahead of 2011’s pres­i­den­tial race.

Fernandez’s hus­band, for­mer Pres­i­dent Nestor Kirch­ner, lost a bid for a seat from Buenos Aires province. The set­backs could kick off a power strug­gle within the party, which Kirch­ner has headed since 2007.

Kirch­ner con­ceded defeat early Mon­day after trail­ing Fran­cisco De Nar­vaez by 32.2 per­cent to 34.5 per­cent with 91 per­cent of the bal­lots counted.

Make sure to check out “Fausta’s Blog” later on in the day. I’m sure she’s going to have her usual stel­lar wrap-up of all the events in Latin Amer­i­can pol­i­tics she always does.